My Dad turns 79 this weekend, and he is still going strong in a
life of scholarship and achievement. He still maintains a small
private practice in psychology and the rest of his time is spent
in study. No puffing on cigars in leisure for this man.
Although his politics do not line up precisely with mine, a
great deal of my attitude towards the capabilities and
shortcomings of government was formed through the prism of his
experiences. Dad worked for the City of New York for two decades,
from 1965 through 1985, first in overseeing remedial education
and job training programs, then as an inspector of mental health
facilities. He shared with me contemporaneously all the
vicissitudes of his tenure. It would be instructive to repeat
here a few of the anecdotes from that period, most notably the
pre-Reagan '70s.
One mind-boggling story involved the Civil Service
examination. In New York City, as in many other local
governments, administrative and executive positions were filled
from a corps of highly qualified trainees known as the Civil
Service. Each year a particular number of positions open within
the ranks, usually a few hundred, and thousands of applicants
file in to take the exam. If you pass once you are on the list
forever, usually guaranteeing you a job within a year or
two.
There was an exception whereby a new person could be hired
from outside the Civil Service and he could remain on the job for
two years pending his certification. If he passed the test during
the allotted time, he became a Civil Servant and remained on the
job. After a while, this became the preferred method of hiring.
Give a person a chance and if their first year is good, have them
take the test.
At one point in the mid-'70s it became the liberal
orthodoxy to claim that all standardized tests discriminated
against minorities, presumably because they made certain cultural
assumptions which puzzled all but suburb-dwellers. This
contention is arrant nonsense but the courts persisted in giving
it credence as a legitimate theory in sociology. So one year,
sure enough, the guys who failed the Civil Service test sued to
block the city from hiring those who passed.
The case bounced along slowly through the system until the
deadline loomed when the previously hired employees had to gain
Civil Service status or leave. Since the suit was not resolved in
time, the city had to fire all those who passed the test. Having
to fill the positions urgently, there was no choice: they hired
all the applicants who had failed. The result was truly of a
Through-the-Looking-Glass Bizarro-World quality: WHOEVER PASSED
WAS FIRED AND WHOEVER FAILED WAS HIRED!
Another episode illustrates the distortion of that time and
has implications for the current controversy surround the New
Black Panther Party. Because whites were being accused of
harboring deep-seated, atavistically recurring, racist impulses,
the government sent them to mandatory sensitivity training.
Instead of hiring nice universalist types to speak about love for
all mankind, they brought it members of the Black Panthers. My
father and his colleagues spent entire days in packed auditoriums
listening to rants by black-power radicals. In one case the
speaker turned around, bent over, and declared that all you
whiteys can kiss my black… er, seat. And all these white
bureaucrats leaped to their feet and gave him a standing
ovation.
One experience my father shared gave me a great deal of
insight into the health-care debate that raged prior to the
passage of Obamacare. Dad was responsible for conducting site
visits at all the mental-health facilities in his territory,
which covered part of Queens and Far Rockaway. He practiced an
unusually high degree of scrutiny in actual files, seeing how
cases were diagnosed and treated. Often he came home crying about
individual patients who were being needlessly destroyed by their
doctors in his view.
His overall assessment was that the three types of hospital
or clinic had significant differences in quality of care. The
worst were the government-run facilities where care was
distinctly subpar. Then came non-profits, which did a passable
job, definitely better than the municipals. Best of all were the
private for-profit hospitals which provided a superior standard.
Having had that window into reality from the perspective of an
inspector who got into the guts of the beast, I could never back
a system that eliminates the profit margin in favor of management
by bureaucratic fiat.
Happy Birthday, Dad! You have taught me a lot and you are
teaching me still, hopefully for many years to come.
